"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year'sfashions." Lillian Hellman

THE ST NEWS CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS by Richard Karsmakers

There is an address. In this world there are many addresses, of course. Some of themmake sense, some of them don't. Every country has them. As amatter of fact, every country has quite a lot. However, I'd wager something quite valuable - or maybe not -that there are few addresses in the world that are as much worthwhile to write to as the one where you can reach the people - er,I should say, the person - behind the disk magazine ST NEWS. The address mentioned at the end of this column is not theactual location of the editor's physical presence, for he is fartoo bulky to be put into what everybody will agree is really avery small Post Office Box in the centre of Utrecht. However, viathis Post Office Box your correspondence will eventually landinto the hands of this totally not illustrious and perhaps just abit overtly industrious person who goes through life by the nameof Richard. As opposed to the mass of glossies (mass?!) that cannot bereached by readers and whose editorial staffs really don't give ahoot about what anyone thinks of what they do as long as they gettheir pay slip at the end of each month, ST NEWS is different. STNEWS - or, rather, that person behind it, me - knows that withoutyou it - he - would be nowhere. So ST NEWS and, indeed, Richard himself (that's me!), would verymuch like to hear from you; what you think of the magazine, whatyou think it lacks and, preferably, something that it can use. Inthe latter category it's programs and articles I am referring to,and especially the "articles" category is one loosely definedindeed. What to think of software reviews and hardware stuff, ofcourse, but ST NEWS also required reviews of music, film andbooks. Take this opportunity to be as verbally diarrhoeaic as theeditor himself, launch your favourite word processor and getgoing! If you've written a decent piece of software that you'd like tospread as much as possible, you could do worse than having it puton the ST NEWS disk. Do note, however, that it has to be prettygood if it takes up rather a lot of space...after all, ST NEWS isprimarily a text-oriented disk magazine and the programs on offerare just little extras, not much more than that. But you can send much more to the correspondence Post Office Boxspecified at the end of this article. What to think of season'sgreetings near the end of the year? What about birthday cardsaround (and preferably on) November 3rd? And, of course, if youshould feel creatively inspired you're most welcome to send CrazyAudio Tapes, Video Tapes (including those of your two sisters -preferably called Cindy Crawford and Claudia Fischer - taking ashower) and generally anything else you'd want to send. Some ofthe most noteworthy things that the editorial staff of ST NEWShas received through the years are Death (a small statuette), aBong (something to smoke mind-expanding herbs in), an 850 KbCrazy Letter and, of course, pieces of variously coloured(usually referred to as "green", for some reason) paper. I take my correspondence seriously and, although it may take awhile until you hear from me, I usually reply - especially ifletters are in some way extraordinary, silly, extravagent, zany,nutty or plain encouraging. However, if you really want to giveme help in writing to you I'd appreciate it much if you'd includesufficient reply postage in the form of Dutch stamps orInternational Reply Coupons (these are little pieces of paperthat you can purchase at your local Post Office, or at least youshould be able to). The Post Office Box specification is as follows...

Be nice and make sure I find something in there next time I go.Like Clint would say: "Go ahead, make my day." For those of youtoo stingy to spend a stamp (in other words people a lot like me)you can also write to me via my electronic mail box. Thespecification of that is r.c.karsmakers@stud.let.ruu.nl. Providedyou UUencode your archived stuff, you can even send me someprograms if you want (as long as the total size doesn't exceedabout 500 Kb). If you want to know when the latest issue of ST NEWS isreleased (do note that this offer is for email only!) just sendan appropriate message to my email box. You'll automaticallyreceive notice of when an issue is released and where on The Netit may be procured. OK now, put those brains in gear, defenestrate that awful readerpassivity and make some worthy contribution to this wholly self-supported part of Atari culture that would probably continuewithout you but that would then be a whole lot less interesting.

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.